University of Kent

Research

General Information

My current research interests focus on three broad themes:

• Theories of urban social change and fragmentation: The developing forms of ‘gated’, lifestyle, ethnic, religious and other enclave communities in contemporary urban space. The social impacts of networks, as well as intra-urban and inter-urban mobility (air travel, mobile classes, global cities) on individual identity, and community. Right now, I am looking at the North-West London Eruv as a case study and writing about this.
• The information society, media and new media: Political economy of new media and the concept of ‘digital capitalism’; ‘intimacy’, ‘friendship’ and ‘communication’ the construction of relationships and presentation of self in the post-modern, information age and how these are mediated through digital technologies such as the internet and mobile phones. Currently, I am interested in blogs and social networking websites, and am writing something up for submission to the journal Convergence.

• Social theory of space: I like to engage current theoretical debates surrounding the nature of spatiality, and on ‘borders and boundaries’. Also, ‘Feeling’ in the construction of urban place which emphasises the phenomenology of ‘belonging’ in the construction of urban space. Right now, I am working on a theory of ‘resonance’ in this regard. I hope to finish submit this somewhere soon.

 

Current Research Projects

Last year I received a small faculty grant from the University of Kent for a project entitled ‘The North-West London Eruv’. I conducted a number of interviews among members of the Orthodox Jewish community inside the Eruv boundary who observe the Eruv. I am currently analysing these interviews and hope to write up and publish this work soon.

Past Research Projects

1996-2000: 'The Culture Industries: The Biography of Cultural Products' with Scott Lash, Celia Lury, Dan Shapiro, Dede Boden and Jeremy Valentine.

This project was funded by the ESRC within its ‘Media Economies and Media Cultures’ programme. The aim was to track the shifts, transformations and transactions which characterise the globalised context of contemporary cultural production. We examined in detail the transformations of several mediated cultural objects and these included the Euro’96 European Football championships, the Wallace and Gromit film series, Trainspotting, Nike, Swatch, the Internet, and contemporary British art. Methods included in-depth interviewing, participant observation, and visual (photographic and video and Internet) data analysis.

2000-2002: 'Housing Decisions in Old Age', with Roger Clough and Mary Leamy in the Department of Applied Social Science at Lancaster.

This research project, ‘Housing Decisions in Old Age’, was funded by the National Lottery Community Fund. The focus of this project was on people's housing pathways after retirement age. We examined whether differences in decision-making and satisfaction are accounted for by a series of socio-economic and health variables. While the emphasis was mostly qualitative, concentrating on the process of decision-making and on the perspective of individuals' accounts of their housing careers since retirement, a number of research methods were employed: interviews, auto-biographical stories, focus-groups and a large mail-out survey questionnaire.

I was also fortunate enough to complete my PhD. and defend it in March of 2001.

It's title is 'Enclaves: Realities, Imagination and the Urban Lifeworld', and if you have a day or two to kill, it's a really good read. As the title may suggest, it's about urban enclaves and how people experience them in intersubjectivity. A clever mix of post-structuralist urban theory and phenomenological sociology really

 

Recent Publications

• (In progress) Understanding Digital Culture. Sage Publications.
• 2009 (forthcoming) ‘Internet practices and everyday life’ in Handbook on Internet Crime, M. Yar and Y. Jewkes (eds.). Willan Publishing
• 2009 (with P. Carney) ‘Vague Spaces’ in Strange Spaces:Geographical Explorations into Mediated Obscurity, André Jansson & Amanda Lagerkvist (eds). Ashgate Publications.
• 2009 ‘Gay Geographies’ International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Elsevier Publications.
• 2008 ‘New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture’. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Vol. 14, No. 4, 387-400 (2008)
• 2006 'The Unmappable: Vagueness and Spatial Experience'. Space and Culture, 9(4): 453-467.
• 2005 ‘Intertextuality, the referential illusion and the production of a gay ghetto’. Social and Cultural Geography, 6(1): 61-80.
• 2004 Clough, R.;  Leamy, M.; Miller, V; Bright, L. Housing Decisions in Later Life, Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan.
• 2004 ‘Stitching the Web into Global Capitalism: two stories’ in Web.Studies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age (Second Edition), David Gauntlett & Ross Horsley (eds.), London and New York: Arnold/Oxford University Press.
• 2003 ‘Mobile Chinatowns: the future of community in a space of flows’. Electronic Journal of Social Issues special issue on ‘the Futures of Community’. Autumn: http://www.whb.co.uk/socialissues/vol2vm.htm
• 2003 Clough, R.; Leamy, M.; Bright, L. with Miller, V. and Brooks, L. Homing in on Housing: A Study of Housing decisions of people Over 60. 58 pages. Eskrigge Social Research
• 2000 ‘Search Engines, Portals, and Global Capitalism’ in Web.Studies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age, David Gauntlett (ed.), London and New York: Arnold/Oxford University Press, pp. 113-122.
• 1998 (with J. Valentine) ‘What Happens if Nothing Happens? Staging Euro’96’, in Production and Consumption of Sport Cultures: Leisure, Culture and Commerce, U. Merkel, G. Lines, I, McDonald (eds.), Eastbourne: LSA, pp.89-110.

   

Some Recent Presentations and Invited Talks

‘Dear World: New media, networking and phatic culture’.

• Department of Media and Communications, Karlstad University, Sweden. January 16, 2008;
• Department of Historical Studies, Malmo University, Sweden. January 23, 2008;
• Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Canada. March 13, 2008

‘Resonance, Intimacy and the production of space.’

• Department of Psychology, University of East London. UK. April 15, 2008
• Leeds University, UK, Department of Geography. Urban Cultures & Consumption Research Seminar Series February 06, 2007

"’Dear World’ - New Media technology and the Compression of the Social"

• University of Bedfordshire, UK, Research Institute for Media Art and Design. RIMAD Research Seminar Series May 09, 2007
• Crossroads: International Association for Cultural Studies Conference, (Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey) July 20-23, 2006.

‘The Unmappable: Vagueness and Urban Experience’

• Crossroads: International Association for Cultural Studies Conference, (Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey) July 20-23, 2006.
• Translocalities: Borders, Boundaries, and the making of sites (Kroeber Anthropological Society, Berkeley, California), April 3-5, 2003.

‘An incidental place? Feeling, thinking and belonging in the resonance of urban public space’.

• Deutscher Geographentag 54: Session on Public Space and Social Participation, invited speaker (Bern, Switzerland), September 28-30, 2003.

‘Housing decisions in old age project’.

• Health Research and Development Now: Involving Users in Research, consultant speaker (Lancaster, UK), April 29, 2003. (with Pam Wilson)

 ‘The rise of the Chinese ethnoburb in Canada: qualitative aspects of a new urban form’

• Canadian Association of Geographers Annual Conference (Toronto, Canada), May 27-June 1, 2002.

‘Reconsidering the power of representation in space’

• Space, Culture, Power: An Interdisciplinary Conference (Aberdeen, UK), April 10-12, 2001.

‘Object spaces: The reflexive constitution of global brands’

• Sociality/Materiality: The Status of the Object in Social Science (Brunel, UK), Sept. 9-11, 1999. (with Deirdre Boden)

‘Euro 96: Staging the event and distributing the risk’.

• Leisure, Culture and Commerce: Leisure Studies Association Annual Conference (Roehampton Institute, London), Sept. 12-14, 1997.

Teaching

I currently convene four modules within the School:

• SO599: The Information Society and Digital Culture (30 credits). A fine module that will change your life, you should try it!
• SO657: Digital Culture (the 15 credit version of the above module)
• SO817: Secondary and Qualitative Methods (Postgraduate)
• SO860: Current Problems in Sociology (Postgraduate)

I also contribute lectures to the year one introductory modules for Cultural Studies and Sociology.

Other part 2 modules I contribute to in the school, include ‘Research Methods’ and ‘Crime, Media & Culture’.

I have in the past taught and co-convened ‘Globalisation’ and ‘Urban Sociology’, but I don’t do those any more.